We are proud to hold the world premiere of the latest double-sided single from Amity Beach, a band with a name that evokes one of the most famous tropes of summer - a marauding, homicidal shark set against the pragmatic and alarmist town sheriff. These are, after all, the two narrative thrusts of the season: societal moralisms in direct conflict with unrestrained id, anarchy at war with the social contract, a shark come to terrorize your town. Amity Beach manages to find a sweet medium here, structured pop constructions with nothing but brilliant carbonated chaos in the middle. On A-Side, "Sunday Nights to Infinity", Amity Beach finds itself at the intersection of slamming guitars and ebullient keys, a late-night anthem about backs pushed like bulwarks against mounting responsibilities. It is one part Surfer Blood, one part Fang Island - especially in the guitars in stomping second movement - like Los Campesinos, an attempt to sound like everything is happening all of the time. "Avalanches", the B-side, recalls Beulah, a horn-drenched summer jam engaged in perpetual lift-off. The band does nothing to declare a winner between these twin impulses to build and destroy, but instead of blindly rooting for the town, Amity Beach admits with two of the best songs of the summer that - just a little bit - we might be pulling for the shark too.
A critic far sharper than this one wrote that Fang Island’s self-titled debut LP sounded like “everyone high-fiving everyone.” Not coincidentally, bassist Mike Jacober arrived onstage for the band’s encore just before midnight on Friday at The Bowery Ballroom and proceeded to slap hands with as many people as he could reach. This was just deserts for the first few rows of an audience that jumped through most of the main set, sung backing vocals without prompting and (although this is extremely unscientific) went completely bananas for the band in front of them. This response wasn’t unsolicited as Fang Island had egged their fans into this frenzy, but, of course, it also wasn’t possible without both the band and the crowd high-fiving everyone.
Fang Island blends prog rock and post-rock with guitar breakdowns that have been dragged kicking and screaming from metal. On the night’s third song, “Welcome Wagon,” the band escalated the stakes, and since their aesthetic so successfully denies the classic pop structure of verses and choruses, their set whirred together over the 45 minutes they spent onstage. Playing material off their first record, Fang Island ran through a pumped-up version of the jerky “Life Coach” and threatened the venue’s door hinges coming out of the soaring bridge of “Davey Crockett,” concretely illustrating the band’s (and their fans’) go-for-broke approach.
The encore was a gracious melding of the album opener, “Dream of Dreams,” and the explosive sing-along single “Daisy.” This prompted the audience to channel Chris Farley’s version of Michael Sembello’s “Maniac,” leaving Fang Island to walk offstage with hugs and smiles. Any high fives were entirely not coincidental.
The big news this year was Pallettstepping out from behind his old moniker, Final Fantasy and becoming, in no uncertain terms, himself. And then he released a nearly perfect concept record about bipolar farmer, Lewis, and the problems of his magically real universe. Pallett's signature strings come on like a storm, building and menacing at the edges before washing over the arrangement with a fury and taste for renewal. The lyrics, beautiful and delicate, end up settling on single edict, "I'm never gonna give it to you." It is beautifully oppositional, independent and wholly itself.
A 2010 reviewer called Fang Island the sound of "everyone high fiving everyone." On "Daisy," an explosive, decentralized rock song, the band traffics in nonsense lyrics and chord resolutions so big they pull the plane out of the nose-dive, reset the financial markets and, yes, organize a six billion person high five at the apex of an arrangement built to crest. In a year with too much anxiety for too many people, Fang Island took this gospel of freedom on the road and to the people: Less worry, more hand slapping.
18. Band of Horses - "Dilly"
Band of Horses did the crossover this year, making more money than ever before and managing to frustrate some of their loyalists. The record was too pop. It was being sold in Starbucks. It was built for sync. "Dilly" cut through the hype and the criticism to divine one of the great choruses of the year. Modulating between three pitches and settling on easy rhymes and platitudinous lyrics, "It took a tall one to see it/two to believe it/three to just get in the way," made it instantly memorable, singable and infectious. In 2011, this will be the soundtrack for some dreadful movie trailer. The crossover is dangerous, but it works.
17. Computer Magic - "Running"
We have a certifiable music crush on Danz from Computer Magic. Her string of one-off singles dominated 2010 in intervals of her choosing and with shocking consistency for an artist that admits she's only been making music for a few months. On "Running," uneasy synths swirl and sway in the ether, as her voice sheds pretension and asks the simple, if fleeting question, "And I'm running all the time/Can you catch him before I go?" No one is making better laptop pop anywhere right now.
It was a year dominated by the surf rock of the Drums and the Weezer-beach vibes of Surfer Blood and the stoned summer of Wavves and Best Coast. Amongst all this coastal music, everyone missed the Finnish upstarts French Films and their buzzing and propulsive "Golden Sea." Track one of the Golden Sea EP, one of the best of the year, the song of the same name takes us to the water, but there is a trick. The slurring lyrical delivery sharpens around the final chorus, "It was only a dream," as plinking synths erupt like children let out for recess, proving the best beaches are the ones we go to in our minds.
15. The Naked and Famous - "Young Blood"
It was the wanton hopelessness of the central lyric, "fall back in love eventually," that kept "Young Blood" from being one of those blind anthems of youth. The Naked and Famous explored the concept of unfettered younger days with a hint of the despair that always creeps near the edge of such meditations. Fact is, lionizing youth is a losing battle, every day the romance a little less intense, each moment a little less pure. It was those words, "fall back in love eventually," that gave a certain, hopeless and hopeful finality to these breathless, sparkler-holding, bleeding-from-the-arm, jumping-in-the-deep-end days of miracle and wonder.
14. Frightened Rabbit - "Nothing Like You"
The next move is never clear for a band who made their name by being miserable and now, against the odds and better advice, are happy. So it was not by choice that Frightened Rabbit fostered a different sense of pathos on 2010 release, The Winter of Mixed Drinks. The band was famous now, and the lead singer was in a relationship that he repeatedly and fondly referenced on stage. The only thing worse than being happy is trying to fake misery. So, Frightened Rabbit angled to describe how they got happy. The pointed and furious "Nothing Like You," took the romance of the platitude in the title, turned it entirely around, not as a compliment but as an accusation. The most damning line is the first one, "This is a story and you are not in it," before offering a shovel for this previous love to bury herself.
On the cusp of super-stardom, Sweden's the Radio Dept. released their best record, Clinging To A Scheme in 2010. Sunny single, "Heaven's On Fire" hid something darker, a perfection inflamed, maybe by an arsonist, from just one look at "you." The power of this significant other - and here we mean this literally - is not unidirectional; its capabilities both productive and able to destroy. Over bouncy keys and lighter-than-air drums and guitars, the vocals belay this danger. One of the best songs of the year, hiding in plain sight, ready to light your perfect world on fire.
12. Magic Man - "Monster"
Boston's Magic Man released one of the best truly independent records of the year, Real Life Color, a twinkling bit of electro-pop that made no apologies. On "Monster," a nearly six-minute epic, there are three distinct movements, each colliding into final marching orders, "Find your monsters, don't tell you friends," turning human psychology into a gigantic internal game of Manhunt. As for the outside world, they tell us to, "leave the world in a jar but come back to it." We are reminded of the great frontier inside, of the terror and beauty that lie within us, and of the stunning little keyboard band in Boston.
It was a little guitar record from a girl in Brooklyn that grabbed us by the throat in 2010. While at times it was reminiscent of a twenty years later Exile In Guyville, this wasn't so angled against love or at sewing up a busted heart. If anything, Blair'sDie Young, and its most seminal track, "Hearts" is about being in love with youth, what she calls the yearning and aching of young life. In her fortune cookie wisdom, Blair confides, "my heart hides in a cassette tape", one of the most subtle and winning lyrics of the year. The final minute finds a spinning conclusion with the hyperventilating title lyric recast as texture. We never had this song on cassette, but we spent most of the year hiding in this digital record, a new, modern love.
There is no cure for exuberance. There is also no comparison. Houston, TX indie rock outfit Young Mammals know this on a molecular level, and debut LP Carrots bears out this notion, boiling over like some forgotten pot of water. "Confetti" whirs until dizzy and out of breath, sounding like Fang Island turned loose on the Where The Wild Things Are soundtrack. "8 4 8" proves a slightly milder ride until its final movement, a shouting and insistent bridge beginning with the starry-eyed lyric, "Let's talk all night ..." There is no relief from this, just hooks and energy when everyone else is asleep.
This generation of kids is challenged with getting earnesty back. They're not disaffected in the way that grunge rock tapped in the early 1990s. If anything, the great crime of the current post-adolescent isn't anger; it's hyper-literacy. And with this well-versedness came criticism and with this criticism, disappointment. Fang Island are hell-bent to get away from this methodology. "Daisy" is a phenomenal eruption into the blue, all that critical energy driven into extroversion, a tribal call to arms. This is music for a generation of kids who grew up having Maurice Sendak read to them before bed, who grew into trouble, hype-dealers, critics, day-job cats and late-night dogs, and inexplicable imaginators, even in their darkest moments. This is for you, everyone.
